Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Ping Pong Kid

Today’s story is about the two on the right. At the DC show, I found one in navy blue, not the bright blue shown above. The clip has a stylized Eagle logo with neat lettering that slopes up and down:

These don’t turn up that often, and it was kind of neat to see one in a new color; unfortunately, it was missing the cap. I also found one in a nice burgundy color:

But what made these colors really interesting to me was that they appeared on the same pencil!

These turned up in another hoard of pencils Frank Hoban brought to the DC show. Michael Little was holed up with these trying to figure out how much he wanted to pay for the bunch. P . . .

I pulled this one, along with a few others aside and made a little pile I was hoping I’d be able to talk him into selling to me. I . . .

Frank and Michael struck their deal, and Michael did end up selling me the batch, although he thought long and hard before he let this one go. N . . .

This one lived happily in my pencil case for one day, after which Michael confessed how much he regretted selling it to me and asked if I’d sell it back to him. Turns out our Ferengi has a soft spot after all – it wasn’t that he thought he could make more money selling it to someone else, he just really, really liked this one. How could I turn him down? G!

Since I had brought my little photo studio with me to the DC show for precisely these circumstances, I ran up to my room, shot these pictures, and turned this one back over to Michael. Who knows how many times we’ll bounce this one back and forth between us now!